Donna Sachet, super volunteer in drag

Reyhan Harmanci

Published
4:00 am PDT, Sunday, June 22, 2008

Drag queen Donna Sachet has become an unofficial ambassador and fundraiser for San Francisco's Castro District and the gay community. She performs weekly at Harry Denton's Starlite Room. She is photographed in her San Francisco home on Friday, June 6, 2008.Photo by Kim Komenich / The Chronicle less

Drag queen Donna Sachet has become an unofficial ambassador and fundraiser for San Francisco's Castro District and the gay community. She performs weekly at Harry Denton's Starlite Room. She is photographed in ... more

Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle

Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle

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Drag queen Donna Sachet has become an unofficial ambassador and fundraiser for San Francisco's Castro District and the gay community. She performs weekly at Harry Denton's Starlite Room. She is photographed in her San Francisco home on Friday, June 6, 2008.Photo by Kim Komenich / The Chronicle less

Drag queen Donna Sachet has become an unofficial ambassador and fundraiser for San Francisco's Castro District and the gay community. She performs weekly at Harry Denton's Starlite Room. She is photographed in ... more

Photo: Kim Komenich, The Chronicle

Donna Sachet, super volunteer in drag

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Fundraiser and drag-queen hostess Donna Sachet has been called many things in her life.

She was crowned Miss Gay San Francisco in 1993, has been national spokesmodel for Smirnoff Twist Vodka and hosted the Queen Mary II's gay-themed transatlantic crossing. Deemed a patron saint by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Sachet is an empress twice over - first as the 30th elected Empress of San Francisco in 1995, and then Leather Empress in 2002.

The list of accolades goes on from there - as does Sachet's busy schedule. She writes a biweekly column for the Bay Area Reporter, performs weekly at Harry Denton's Starlight Room and is a perennial charity event host. She'll be one-third of the KRON-TV anchor team covering the Pride Parade next Sunday, and she's hosting Saturday's Pride Brunch, an event she and Gary Virginia began 10 years ago.

Like any classy broad, though, she won't give her age, and she prefers not to use her non-drag name.

Being Donna Sachet has not been without its stickier moments. Both Sachet and one of her close friends, California Assemblyman Mark Leno, remember a particularly tough spot.

"Nancy Pelosi, she came to one of the early Pride Brunches," Sachet says. "I was at the mike, chatting away, and when I sat down, someone leaned over and said, 'Don't you love it? She's wearing the same suit you're wearing.' "

Leno, in a separate interview, was more specific.

"There was a fundraiser at Stars. ... It might have been Pride weekend," he says. "Nancy Pelosi, then a congresswoman, was there, and she and Donna were in the same red Chanel suit!"

The horror!

But Sachet was the picture of grace.

"Donna could manage that situation as easily as she could navigate a leather bar South of Market," Leno says.

Diplomacy is perhaps Sachet's most important skill. An unofficial ambassador for the Castro, her home for 17 years, she is humble when asked about her list of awards.

"This is going to sound falsely modest, but I'm proud because of all the people who helped me accomplish these things," she says. "The holiday show that I started 16 years ago, for instance."

An event that started as a holiday celebration for her family of friends - "people would put money in a jar" to pay for it - became Sachet's annual musical variety show fundraiser, "Songs of the Season," which benefits the AIDS Emergency Fund.

"I could never have done it without other people asking, at every turn, how they could help," she says.

Sachet, like many good hostesses, hails from the Deep South. Born Kirk Reeves in South Carolina, she moved around for much of her youth. After attending Vanderbilt University, she went to New York.

"I was kind of a rolling stone, really didn't have any long-term relationships," Sachet says. "I moved to San Francisco when a job opportunity came up that got me out of New York, a city that I had come to love."

It wasn't long after coming to the Bay Area that the drag queen as we know her today was born. She had dressed in drag before, for costume parties and the like, but only occasionally. Then, during a retreat for the Gay Men's Chorus, which she had joined soon after landing in San Francisco, she lip-synced to a Donna Summer song with a significant swagger - inspiring the name Donna Sachet.

"I've always had a feminine side that I enjoyed expressing," she says. "By creating this Donna Sachet character, I get to use that part of me to affect things."

Because she has a choral and theater background, Sachet is one of the few drag queens who actually sing rather than lip-sync.

"That's always an element of surprise," she says, "when people go, 'Oh, her lips are moving!' "

But entertaining is not her only goal. She mandates that she get a chance to speak at the events she's involved in.

"I insist that people give me an opportunity to talk," she says. "I'm not just a clown - I have something to say."

Sachet began dabbling in volunteer work when she was establishing a career in retail on the East Coast.

"As I began to feel the need to volunteer, I knew I was a very, very tiny fish in a huge ocean. Everything was licking envelopes," she says. "When I got a great job opportunity and a change of venue, within a couple of years I was doing more than licking envelopes. I was creating the envelopes and making events."

Those two interests - performing in drag and doing volunteer work - came together perfectly in the Donna Sachet persona.

"I came here at a good time," she says. "I found a community that allowed me not just to participate but to lead. I stand on the shoulders of Harvey Milk, Sylvester James and others."

Until a few years ago, Sachet was very much dividing her time between her retail career and her Donna duties. It made for some tight scheduling.

"When the Muni F-line came down to the Castro, I heard there would be a ceremony, and at the time the ribbon was cut, I was the reigning Empress of San Francisco," Sachet says.

Logically, she thought she should take part in the festivities. She made some phone calls, but no one got back to her until the day before the event.

"So finally I get the call - 'we'd like to speak to the Empress about cutting the ribbon' - and I thought, 'Ooh no, that's tomorrow!," she says. "I went to work, and then left for lunch, threw all of the (Sachet) outfit on and came down to the event all dolled up. We got a great picture of Susan Leal, Mayor Frank Jordan and I, and then five minutes later, I was taking it all off - and back to work."

No one at work guessed where she had been.

Now, as a full-time drag performer, Sachet says she values her time off at her home in the Castro, which is just far enough away from the nightlife scene to be restful. However, she is a fierce advocate of keeping the crazy mix of gay life vital in the face of gentrifying forces. She embraces active nightlife and would like to see Halloween festivities continue in the district. On these issues, she sometimes clashes with her political friends.

But she has some serious fans.

With her patrician good looks and excellent taste in power suits, Sachet has a classically powerful air about her. She's a grown-up drag queen, taking what began as a campy ode to a pop singer to an unprecedented place in city leadership.

"When I took my seat as a county supervisor, I named her the first lady of District 8," Leno says. "When I was elected to the state Assembly, she became the first lady of the Assembly from District 13. Now, hopefully, she will be the first lady of the Third Senate District." {sbox}